Festive Magic of Cheese: A Home-Cook’s Best Friend

If there is one good friend capable of doing a great deal of the heavy-lifting for the home-cook over the festivities, it is cheese. Wonderful, versatile, delicious, easy-to-serve cheese. Or, “preserved sunshine”, which is the way I’ve heard several cheesemakers describe this amazing dairy product down the years.

From Sunshine to Cheese: Nature’s Alchemy

Sharpham cheeses

Sunshine makes the grass grow, we can’t eat it but cows can and so we take their milk. Alas, it will not last long unless we preserve it in some way, but that process - that extraordinary metamorphosis - sees a white liquid turned into solid blocks of gold. Which, surely, is a kind of alchemy?

Cheese: The Effortless Star of Festive Feasts

And particularly good news for home-cooks and those in charge of overseeing hospitality at this time of year - because, while you can do so much with cheese, it is also capable of playing a leading role with very little effort required. The main Christmas dinner dish, for examples, takes hours to prepare - but a well thought-out cheeseboard, well presented, can be the work of minutes. And a really good one, complete with pickles, artisan-made crackers, chutneys, fruits and preserves, is capable of inspiring the same amount of pleasure and applause as anything else you put on the table.

Catering for Every Guest: Cheese for All Tastes

And who doesn’t like cheese? Yes, there are a few - but then, there are so many types of cheese available nowadays it should be possible to even keep everyone, even a vegan, happy. I tasted some very passable plant-based “cheeses” being developed at The Food Works in Weston-Super-Mare not long ago.

The Swiss Cheese Connection: A Taste of the Alps

But it is, of course, the ‘real deal’ that does it for me. And many of my favourite cheeses come from places like the Alps where you couldn’t easily grow or harvest arable crops anyway, so there can be no environmental arguments over using the steep land in more planet-friendly ways. I have met ecologists in Switzerland who have shown me how the low-stocking regimes preferred by local dairy farmers are enormously important to the health of the natural environment. No grazing cows, no swathes of wild-flowers…

Simmental and Emmental: Cheese from the Heart of Switzerland

The best Swiss cheeses are among the finest in the world. A farmer in the Simmental area once took me around his winter barns, set deep in snow high on the mountain, and showed me the big dry loft where great clouds of sweet smelling hay were being stored loose. A computer-controlled machine pushed the required amount off the edge of the loft a couple of times each day and it would fall among happy cows who wolfed it down with great enthusiasm.

Traditional cheesemaking in Switzerland

Just like I wolfed down the resultant cheese with enthusiasm. The farmer, Ueli Tritten and his wife Hedi, claimed you could taste the floral fragrance in their hand-made gold-medal-winning cheeses, and you really could. Indeed, with a bit of coaching you could tell the difference between the cheeses made in summer off fresh mountain herbage, and the winter stuff created from their carefully made ‘haylage’.

Last winter I visited a rather beautiful part of Switzerland where they make Emmental cheese. To celebrate this delightful cheese, a special centre has been created in the heart of the region to tell the story of this famous cheese.

Discover the Emmentaler Visitor Centre

An early cheesemaking kitchen in Emmental

The Emmentaler Visitor Centre offers a comprehensive look into the history, production, and cultural significance of this particular form of ‘preserved sunshine’. There are interactive exhibits, cheese-making demonstrations, and of course, cheese tasting. The place has, not surprisingly, become a significant tourist attraction.

The History of Emmental Cheese

Emmental, known for its large holes and distinct flavour, originates from the Emme Valley in the Canton of Bern - and dates back to the early 13th century. The cheese was first named in a document in 1293, but its recipe - and the unique production techniques employed to make it - were developed much earlier.

Emmental in winter

The holes, often referred to as 'eyes', are created by the release of gases by bacteria used during the fermentation process. These bacteria consume the lactic acid in the cheese and release carbon dioxide gas, which forms bubbles. The size and number of the holes are considered a sign of quality and are carefully regulated during the cheese-making process.

A leading Emmental cheesemaker

A Somerset Perspective: The Revival of British Cheese

Strange... A Somerset lad born and bred, banging on about cheeses from overseas when this part of the world has some of the best dairy produce to be found anywhere on the planet. Some of our cheddars, for example, (Quickes’ clothbound mature, to name but one) can genuinely be counted as some of the best in the world today.

But it wasn’t always like that. In the 1950s, 60s and 70s it was if we British were determined to totally destroy our cheese heritage by industrialising the living daylights out of it. The huge, overly salted, rubbery blocks of my youth are best forgotten. The Swiss, the French, the Italians, and so on, never did that. Or didn’t do it on the same all-engulfing scale, anyway.

Slices of Quickes cheddar

But now we’ve more than caught up. Today, more cheeses are made in the UK than even France. Which is saying something. We have over 750 cheeses at the latest count and as far as I know there is not a county that doesn’t boast at least one superb artisan-made example.

The Festive Cheeseboard: A Christmas Tradition

No wonder a festive cheeseboard can be such a wonderful thing. And something capable of lasting through Christmas right to the other side of New Year. The collection I put together earlier this week is still going strong, although serious dents have been made and may require a little refurbishing by the time we sing Auld Lang Syne.

Sharpham Dairy: The Star of My Festive Cheeseboard

A Sharpham cheese table

A largish portion of it features cheeses from Sharpham, the UK’s first B Corp cheese dairy, based near Totnes. The team has received some outstanding accolades, including a coveted 3-star Great Taste Award for Cremet and multiple golds for their celebrated mixed milk Rushmore cheese, as well as beloved classics like Sharpham Brie and Ticklemore. A family-run business led by Greg and Nicky Parsons, Sharpham Dairy has everything you need for a perfect festive feast, pairing their artisanal cheeses, chutneys and crackers with a range of Devon-made produce that’s ideal for sharing.

For some years now I have been giving my son, who lives outside the region, a Sharpham subscription box and, because he likes the cheese so much, it has become his annual Christmas present. Each box contains a curated selection of cheeses, crackers and condiments, delivered quarterly to the recipient’s door. The boxes feature three of Sharpham’s multi-award winning varieties, a local guest cheese, Sharpham sourdough crackers, a Sharpham chutney and tasting notes. (All cheeses are available from www.sharphamcheese.co.uk)

Looking Ahead to 2025: The Future of Cheese

I wonder what kind of dairy delights 2025 will bring?

I’ve been lucky enough to try cheeses of many kinds all around the globe and have even been a judge at the British Cheese Awards. The most surprising place I ever found a treasure trove of different cheeses was in Japan, where the northern island of Hokkaido is a hotbed of dairy-inspired indulgence. Good stuff? Yes, absolutely. Better than our own cheeses? Absolutely not. But very, very, interesting nevertheless.

I look forward to more surprises of the “preserved sunshine” kind next year - and hope you readers get to enjoy some too. If you do, please let me know at how@martinhesp.co.uk.